I killed a man last night.

I didn't care much about him, though it annoyed me that he got blood on my jacket. He didn't die quick enough, though. He thrashed and whimpered and begged a long time after he should have been dead.

So I ran him through a second time, just to make sure.

I love being an animal. It gives me an excuse to do things like that--to tear into bastards with my hands and shred them to pieces. That's why I had to leave New York--why I couldn't stay there in their sheltered little school.

I've got bloodlust. I'm not a nice, civilized young man like Scotty boy. Scott is the modern man, sensitive new-age man who cares about how his shirt looks tucked into his pants and spends twenty minutes debating on whether or not you'll get offended if he holds the door open for you.

I'd just throw you over my god damn shoulder and haul you through the door, and if you've got a problem with it fine--I'll put you down. Just don't expect me to hang around nursing your damn hurt feelings.

I like that approach. Take it or leave it. All or nothing. Not like New Age Man, who spends so much time dancing around and talking about his feelings that you've got to wonder how he finds time to have feelings.

Maybe he doesn't. Maybe that's the trick--killing all your baser instincts off till you're pretty much a dickless bastard.

So Scott would have hauled this bastard off to jail. Maybe sat down with him and talked about his problems.

I ran him through with my claws. Twice, just to make sure he really felt it.

I can see why the girl he was in the process of raping was a little scared of me. She was probably a little scared of everyone, and I'm not exactly at my least intimidating growling and panting with my claws dripping blood.

But she looked like Marie. And if I ever catch anyone so much as touching Marie in a way she doesn't like--powers be damned, there are still ways people could hurt her--and if someone does . . . I'm gonna slice him up from the inside out and make him eat his own god damned balls.

She whimpered when I tried to pick her up, closed her eyes and lashed out at me and begged me to just leave her alone. With all that long brown hair falling all over the place, and the blood--god he'd hurt her, and for that I wanted to wake him up and kill him again--it was hard to concentrate. All my instincts were screaming that this was Marie, and I've yet to convince my instincts that Marie isn't mine to protect and hold and love and keep away from the world.

Isn't my mate.

So I picked up the girl who wasn't Marie, and held her to my chest as she thrashed about and begged me to put her down. And I started walking, and I ignored the fact that she was bleeding all over me. I ignored the fact that she was twisting against me and making my body react.

I ignored all that beautiful brown hair that was flying all over the place. Because she wasn't Marie.

The woman at the front desk in the emergency room took one look at the girl and grimaced. She hit a button on her phone, and said something in a low voice that I wasn't supposed to hear--but of course I did. "Someone just brought Megan in again."

I stood with the girl in my arms, and she was shivering and crying now, with her face pressed into my chest. When I looked down all I could see was brown hair and blood, and it was all I could do not to kill the first person I could find, even though I kept telling myself that she wasn't Marie.

The doctor who came out looked nervous. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the girl. "I'm sorry, sir--but Megan knows that she can't come here anymore."

"Excuse me?" I growled it, just because I could. Because I'm not Sensitive New Age Man, and I love watching the women shiver when I get that predatory look on my face.

"Megan knows that she is not going to be treated her anymore," the doctor repeated, but she looked decidedly more nervous.

"And why are you denying her treatment?" I'm good at making my voice deadly. It's what us old-fashioned animal-type bastards do best. "She was raped and abused. She needs help."

"You obviously don't know her, sir." The doctor had a smug smile on her face. "Megan is one of the town's local prostitutes--and she knows that prostitution is illegal. She was told last time she came in with wounds like this that she would no longer be treated for them."

"She was being raped--" The hair on the back of my neck is standing up. If I didn't have this girl in my arms, my claws would be out and I'd be ready to kill something.

The doctor glares at me. "Megan will let any man do anything to her if he pays enough. That's why she's not getting treatment anymore. You can leave now, or I'll have you removed, and she'll get arrested."

There's not much I can do with a girl wrapped in my arms. I snarl--and have the satisfaction of seeing the doctor take a step back.

Then I leave, and I go back to my hotel room and bring her with me, because even though she isn't Marie, I can't just leave her on the street.

I try to wash the cuts on her body and tuck her into bed, and then I sit on the other bed and watch her. She's got her back to me, and all I can see is the smooth rise of a shoulder covered by a tumbling cascade of chestnut brown hair.

She's not Marie. I tell myself that firmly, before rolling over and going to sleep.

I dream of making love to Marie.

She's sitting at the end of my bed when I wake up, naked and trembling with only a blanket wrapped around her body. Her hair is falling in her face, hiding the ugly bruises from the night before.

She stares at me.

"What do you want?" My voice is rougher than I mean it to be, but I can't help it. I'm an animal, and my senses are confused. My instincts are telling me that this is my mate. My instincts are telling me to take her.

She sees it in my eyes. She crawls up the bed and lays on her stomach, and all I can see is the expanse of her back and the thick brown hair tumbling over her shoulder as her small hands grasp the headboard.

"For free," she murmurs, but I don't listen, because I'm living in a fantasy where this is Marie. She's not Marie--but I don't care anymore.

I leave my gloves on, because I can pretend that I have to. Can pretend that I can't really touch her skin--that she is deadly.

She doesn't respond much at first--her body is used to being used. Something inside me snaps, and I take her--hard and fast, and then slow and deadly . .. I force her to respond, force her to feel me and feel how much I possess her.

I pretend she's Marie, and strive to make her scream for me. I watch the brown hair dance across the bare back as she starts to writhe beneath me, as her head tosses back and forth. As I lean forward to brace my hands on the headboard on either side of hers, I feel my entire body lurch at the sight of pale, delicate hands cornered by mine.

I sink my face into the brown hair as she starts to scream, pretending that she is Marie.

She collapses to the bed underneath me, and stays on her stomach with her head turned away from me. I lay with my face pressed against her hair, my hand resting on a hip that is too skinny to be Marie's.

She's not Marie.

And I hate her for it.

She's gone when I wake up again.

So is my wallet.

I don't care, though. I feel dirty and old and terrible.

This has to stop. She's the fifth person I've slept with, the fifth person I've brought back to my room and rutted with, just because I could fool myself into thinking it was someone else.

They weren't Marie. None of them were. My body knows it--it knows when it's being fooled. I'm an animal, and my instincts are perfect. I know when the body beneath mine belongs to my mate.

Marie is my mate. Every base and vile animal instinct in my body has told me so, and I believe them. I live for the nights when I dream of her, naked and sweating and screaming out for me, her body alive at my touch. She belongs to me, every inch, every part of her. I don't care if she doesn't know it--it's true.

I leave the key to the hotel on my bed and check out, climbing onto the motorcycle I've long since stopped thinking of as Scott's. Every time I sleep with one of them I run--run to a new town. Run from the memory and the need that grips my animal body.

I can't run far enough, though. Every town I go to has beautiful young women with long brown hair who stare at me with eyes too old. Most of them have been abused by life.

So I abuse them a little more. Take them back to my room and let them know what it's like to be fucked by someone who wants you to be someone else.

If I were Sensitive New Age Guy like Scott, I'd hate myself.

I guess I understand why he hates me now.

So I run to the next town, hoping this one is the one where I'll find some nice blonde woman my own age to take home. Some woman who will distract me from the need ravaging my body. The need to take a lonely little girl and mark her as my own.

There's only one problem. Every time I meet some girl--every time one lays a hand on my arm and asks me if I want to go home with her . . . every time it happens, I can only think one thing.

She's not Marie.